"There is power in the written word. There is power
in learners finding their own voices."Tanya Schnabl
6th Grade Teacher, Sherburne/Earlville Middle School
Sherburne, New York

Imagine driving down the highway, faced with flashing emergency
vehicle lights and slowing traffic. Immediately, you begin
to develop a hunch about what is happening around you. The
lights from the police cars and ambulances are clues of an
accident scene ahead. Your prior experiences help you understand
why the traffic is slowing down, as motorists take time to
survey the accident. Emergency vehicles bustle towards the
wreckage. You might recall a car accident that you experienced
in the past. You are sizing up the situation. You are predicting
how long it will take you to reach your destination, based
on the pace of the traffic. You consider alternate routes
for travel.

This process of creating an understanding is not so different
from what effective readers do when they interact with literature.

Dr. Judith Langer spent over a decade examining how readers
interact with texts, how they make meaning out of what they
read, and the processes effective readers go through to create
complex, rich understandings of literature. Her carefully
researched observations are described in a process she refers
to as building envisionments. In building envisionments, readers
formulate a dynamic set of thoughts about a text, including
their impressions, questions, judgments, predictions, and
connections to their own lives. This recursive process occurs
from the moment readers pick up a text and continues beyond
the reading of the literature. Readers continue to think about
the text. They discuss the literature, wrestle with it, and
continually grow their interpretations of it.

This
first workshop program in a series of nine introduces the
hallmarks of the envisionment-building process. Dr. Langer
explains ways that teachers can support and encourage this
process to help students become better readers and thinkers.
Eight middle school language arts classroom teachers also
reflect upon their own teaching of literature. These classroom
teachers grapple with the authentic, everyday challenges of
middle school language arts instruction. They examine demands
in education, needs of their students, and their beliefs in
the power of literature to shape critically literate members
of society.